


Glitter Shimmers Down

by doctor_jasley



Category: Fairytales, Rapunzel (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Death, Community: au_bingo, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2012-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 03:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/339359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctor_jasley/pseuds/doctor_jasley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Story of Rapunzel didn't happen exactly the way we know it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glitter Shimmers Down

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written in 2010 for au bingo

The clouds are fluffy and a very splendid shade of white. Rapunzel can see them float lazily by from her perch on her balcony. She loves the warm breeze that tries to get tangled up in her long, ever so long, sun-stained hair. It’s too long, though, and eventually the wind gives up and whips by her playfully. The land below stretches on for miles in every direction. A vast forest populates some of the distance and past that the tall spires of a near by kingdom stand straight and glittery in the brightness of the early evening sun.

She’s never really wanted to explore the outside world. Mother tells her horror stories about the people who infest the world below and Rapunzel just doesn’t think she wants to deal with all of the trouble and hassle Mother preaches about. Her tower’s safe and cozy. She has everything she could need up here. Not to mention the fact that Mother visits almost every day.

Mother’s nice to her and helps her comb out the tangles that climbing up and down causes the strands of her strong, strong hair. Some days she even brings fresh cheeses and books for Rapunzel to read through. Never once does Rapunzel question Mother’s motives for keeping her high up in this tower. Mother loves her and would never do anything that wasn’t in Rapunzel’s best interests.

So the days pass by. Some are bright with bird song carrying on the edges of the breezes that flutter this way and that. Other days are rainy and the pearl-size water droplets splash and plink against the balcony and drum out a fast, happy beat against the roof of the tower. The curtains darken with moisture but Rapunzel never draws the balcony windows shut. She loves the smell the rain brings with it. A newness that sweeps through her room and makes everything seem clean and fresh.

On the last day of summer, she sits at the edge of her balcony with her hair tumbled to the ground far below. Mother won’t be around to see her for days, saying she’ll be off at the market selling wares. There’s plenty of bread, cheeses, and water around to keep Rapunzel full and happy for the time before Mother comes back.

The whole morning there’s been movement through the forest and eventually a man stumbles out of the underbrush. Rapunzel knows he must be a man because of the pictures she finds in the books Mother brings her. He probably heard her singing and is coming to investigate. When she goes to draw her hair up the sun reflects off of the strands and the guy stops and seems to squint in her direction.

He moves in her direction and yells up to her for help. There was a hunting accident. Rapunzel has no understanding of what a hunting accident is, but the man’s voice carries in the clearing around her tower and it’s distressed. Like Mother gets when someone sneaks into her garden and tramples all of her plants.

She shouldn’t let the man up, but he needs help and she’s sure he’s not lying. Who would she be if she refused to help? So she wraps her hair around the bedpost nearest the balcony window tight before lowering the rest of her hair back down to the stranger. Once she’s sure there’s enough slack she yells for the guy to start climbing up. With him climbing and her pulling; he makes his way up faster than Mother, in her old age, can usually muster.

He’s got drops of red, red blood on his clothing and his hands are shaking. When she gets him calm enough he tells her about the Prince hurt in the forest. She gives him ripped up pieces of her sheet, some water and her only bottle of liquor and wishes him the best of luck before nudging him towards the balcony. The clouds are threatening to build into a storm and if the sad guy wants to get back to his Prince then it would be best to try now.

He slides down her hair quickly and sprints to the tree line. In moments his shadow is lost in the bramble of the forest. She falls asleep against the cool stones of her balcony window with her hair drifting in the puffs of wind kicking up around her tower. Eventually a light tugging wakes her and she looks down into the gloomy evening to find two men standing at the foot of her tower. One’s the sad man from before. The other’s leaning against him and that means he must be the Prince.

The sky rumbles dark and serious. Streaks of white paint the grey clouds a sickly pale color when Rapunzel yells down to them to climb up. The Prince climbs up slow and steady and she braces herself against the damp stones of the balcony. When he crests over the edge of her window and topples in, the sad man from before climbs up; ever cautious of his weight cutting into her hair.

When he draws himself onto her balcony and slides down to lean against his Prince the first thick droplet of rain splashes against her hand. When she goes to draw the rest of her hair up, his hands join hers and together they heft the rest of her long, long hair up onto the balcony. Together they shoulder the weight of the sagging Prince to her bed.

The Prince spends the night between fits of restless sleep and staring at her. He even calls her beautiful while the other man rolls his eyes and checks the Prince’s skin for the flush of a fever. The other man introduces himself as the Prince’s servant Marin. They spend the night talking about the world while the rain pitters and patters and stains her dark curtains even darker.

In the morning, she breaks off portions of her bread and cheeses and offers it to them. After some time, the two of them hug her tight and promise to return with more stories of the world to tell her. They leave at a slow and staggered pace. She watches as they vanish into the tree line.

For three days, Rapunzel sits at her balcony and watches the sun set. She’s never wanted to leave before. The vast expanses of the wide world have always held no passion in her heart. But now the wonders and joys she’s been missing have been carried to her from the hearts of two handsome men who now carry a portion of her own heart with them as they travel homeward.

When Mother shows up around dawn the fifth day, Rapunzel does nothing to hint at her changed view of the world under her gaze. She does however watch Mother ever so closely. Why would this woman lie to her? Why would Mother tell her all children screamed in the streets at all hours and not just a few at certain hours? Or that the streets ran red with the blood of the poor? It makes no sense and Rapunzel is confused by it.

She spends her days with Mother and eventually gains the courage to ask questions she’s forgotten about as she’s grown. All are answered in the same gruff manner and Mother leaves with a frown on her face, anger lacing her words. After one evening of making Mother swear as she left, the Prince and Marin show up at the base of her tower and ask to climb up.

The Prince spends the night spinning tales of his parents, the King and Queen of the neighboring kingdom, and the follies of his youth. Marin interrupts when the Prince omits various embarrassing facts from his stories. The three of them fall asleep sprawled over the rumpled covers and quilts piled on her bed. She awakes before the sun yawns its golden maw and shakes the two awake. It would do no good to have Mother find them.

The rest of fall passes much in the same manner and so does the winter. The Prince and Marin visit when they can sneak away from castle duties and hide away from Mother when she comes around. On the first day of spring, only the Prince climbs up. When Rapunzel looks down below, Marin’s seated at the base of the tower with a book propped open over his crossed knees. He waves when he notices her looking down at him. On bended knee at her balcony window, the Prince pronounces his love for her and suddenly she realizes why Marin stayed below. It’s awfully grand to be loved, and even though it hurts her to not have Marin up here as well, she embraces the Prince in a tight hug.

After that, Marin stays at the base of the tower and reads in the evening’s setting dim while the Prince spins yarn after yarn about the world sprawled under her feet. They make plans for her to leave with him when spring dips into summer. For once she can’t wait and thinks of the day when she can walk on soft ground and hug Marin tight and call him her closest friend while holding her Prince tight to her side.

However, things do not go as planned. One day the Prince comes alone, words of Marin being ill tripping off his tongue like omens of ill tidings. They fall asleep together and without Marin there to throw pebbles at the window to warn of light’s first shadowy creep of brightness, they sleep through dawn’s fierce awakening. Her hair swaying in the early morning breeze suddenly tugs tight and startles her awake.

Before she can shake the Prince to alertness, Mother climbs up over her balcony rail and sees them together. The anger’s apparent in her voice when she starts to yell. The Prince bleary blinks open his eyes and rolls off her bed to approach Mother. Everything blurs, and Rapunzel watches as her Prince is shoved out of her tower window to the unforgiving ground below. She runs to the edge and gets there with enough time to here him thump against the clearing’s floor. He’s crumpled at the base of the tower not moving as blood seeps onto the grass surrounding him.

Mother turns to her and grabs her hair tight and warns her ‘Never again child or I will cast you out like I did him.’. With that Mother swings back down Rapunzel’s hair to the base of the tower. She watches in shock as Mother dumps the day’s food onto the green, green grass and grabs the Prince’s twisted ankle. Rapunzel tries to scream down at her to ‘not touch him’ but her words tumble out as harsh squeaks and trembling sobs. All she can do is watch as Mother slowly, ever so slowly, drags his broken body away.

For three days, Mother does not show. For three days, Rapunzel sits curled up on her bed and starves. At dawn of the fourth day, the sun shines in and glints on something hidden near her balcony drapes. When she goes to investigate, she finds her Prince’s discarded knife. Without thinking too hard about her prison, Rapunzel changes and then sits at the edge of her bed and begins to saw her hair off. She pricks her fingers twice and her blood coats strands of her hair a glossy and sickly red. By the sun’s zenith she’s finished. Looping the end of her cut hair around her bedpost one last time she knots it and throws the other end out her balcony window.

She’s tired and aching by the time she climbs down. But it doesn’t matter. She’s free. The moment her feet touch the ground all she can think about is the Prince’s blood covering the patch of grass right in front of her. Her knees buckle and she tumbles down. There’s no telling how long she sits there lost in her terrible thoughts of the Prince’s death. When a cool, dry hand touches her chin and lifts her face up, she startles and tries to back away.

Rapunzel blinks several times through her tears. Eventually, they clear enough that she can make out that Marin’s kneeling in front of her. He looks tired and wrung out. They huddle against the side of the tower and she tells him everything. At the end, Marin hugs her tight and tells her she can come back to the castle with him. The Prince’s parents would be more than happy to meet their son’s betrothed. After that, the two of them together can find Mother and have her tried for murdering royalty. 

Rapunzel shakes her head. What if they don’t believe her?

So instead, Marin devises a plan and they wait in the tree line for Mother to show up. As they wait, he breaks off pieces of the bread he’s carrying and hands over his skin of cool water for her. They spend the rest of that day and half of the next waiting until late in the evening of that next day when Mother hobbles by and goes directly to Rapunzel’s forgotten hair and tries to climb up. Apparently the knot untangles and Mother falls scant inches back to the ground and scowls. She picks herself up and scans the tree line but doesn’t spot Rapunzel or Marin crouched in the brush at the tree line.

With quick steps, Mother hobbles back in the direction she came from mumbling about ungrateful children who never deserve to be helped and should be torn apart by the wolves. Silently, Marin and Rapunzel follow her. Eventually, Mother stops outside a small cottage with a giant garden sprawled out behind it. The sun’s been asleep for hours by now and it’s hard to make out the exact vastness of the garden but Rapunzel knows it exists. Mother used to talk about it all the time when Rapunzel was younger and eager to hear Mother talk about herbs and lettuces for hours on end.

They sneak in behind her and while Mother putters around making tea, they search for the Prince’s broken body. It takes time and effort to not make a sound. Some time after Mother’s fallen asleep in her chair they find the Prince stuffed in a closed traveling chest. Marin silently cuts a piece of the Prince’s clothing off before closing the chest and pushing it slowly back into position. Together, Marin and Rapunzel slip out of Mother’s house undetected and head in the direction of the castle.

When they arrive several days later, Marin kneels at the King and Queen’s feet and offers up the Prince’s dagger and the scrap of his clothing to them. He tells them of Mother. In fact, he calls her a witch and Rapunzel should be correcting him but finds that she can not. Instead, she tries not to cry as the King and Queen embrace her as their daughter and whisper into her hair that their son had told them so much about his betrothed.

At dawn, Mother is brought to the King and Queen. The chest had been found exactly where Marin said it would be. Mother weaves no tales or yarns. All she says is that the Prince had taken from her and been punished for it. She’s sentenced swiftly and Rapunzel hides away in the castle’s library while the sentence is carried out in promptness with no finesse.

The kingdom mourns the loss of their Prince. No one looks down at Rapunzel, though some do gossip about her short, short hair and how unbecoming it is for a Princess to have such deficient locks. Slowly, she becomes part of the royal family and Marin stands by her side as her faithful guard. She still misses the Prince every day, but is grateful for what he’s given her.

Each morning she awakes and watched the clouds float by the castle windows and wonders what the people are doing. Then she dresses and visits with the King and Queen during breakfast. Marin comes in around noon and together the two of them walk the local villages and weave stories of happiness and sadness for the people who stop and clasp their hands tight.

Over the years, her story’s told to the children of the villages. It morphs and twists until much of it is so different from what Rapunzel remembers. She does nothing to change the tale’s ever changing threads. It isn’t her story anymore. It’s theirs now and maybe, just maybe, she likes to hear them tell it their way more. Because then she gets to be with the Prince again and the children she never got to have with him.

And it hurt so much, because she really does miss her Prince dearly. But she has a Kingdom to help support and a best friend at her side who will never willingly leave her alone. Perhaps her story didn’t end quite the way she’d have liked it but that’s ok. She’s fine. She always will be. Just like the white, fluffy clouds that will always continue to float by overhead, day after day and year after year.


End file.
